Today I visited J. Press’ York Street shop for a preview of its fall collection. More on that in the next post.

Later I stopped by Brooks, where a jacket caught my eye. It was certainly eye-catching, and I realized it bore a certain similarity to one I’d just seen at York Street. Both, you see, combine blazer/sportcoat styling with elements from hooded sweatshirts, aka hoodies.

On the left is a York Street blazer with sweatshirt-style front pockets, while on the right is Brooks Brothers herringbone sportcoat with bonus hood (not sure what the bird and tree appliqué signifies; there’s also a BB logo on the back).

I feel like we should have a vote, but I’m not exactly sure on what. — CC

I don’t really understand what they are trying to do here… if they want a sport coat that is as casual as a sweatshirt, why not just make a sport coat out of sweatshirt material? If the big issue is having a hood available for cold weather, why not just make a sport coat with a throat latch and a concealed hood in the collar? The way they’ve mashed the two together makes no sense at all.

I think it was last year that I started to see “casual” sport coats that seemed to be the offspring of a well-constructed sweater and a sport coat. While it didn’t work for staid me, it understand that style evolves and I thought it was an okay reinterpretation / modern interpretation for those looking for something different, but still wanting to echo classic clothing. But these two sport coats look forced, look incongruous – as if the designers had an marketing-driven idea to leverage the hoodie’s fifteen minutes of fame (if we are lucky) with a classic garment and, presto, the money will flow in. As with most money-first design ideas, this one is a transparent failure.

It’s like an accident on the side of the road that everyone just can’t help but gawk at.

If I was forced to select the lesser of the two evils, I would have to go Press on this one…at least one could attempt a claim at having a European chic quality to it, but B2 appears to be a shotgun attempt to try to hit something–anything! Perhaps they realized that and that’s when they added the hunting scene as an inside joke. I think the deciding factor there was that a) it appears to be for the lazy who want or “need” this sport coat over a hoodie arrangement but can’t be bothered to just put a sport coat over a hoodie, which at least would score layering points, and b) it looks like they also created the look of the hoodie arm cuffs as if they were sticking out from the sleeves of a sport coat.

It seems to demonstrate desperation…
…to drive incremental sales (which to their credit, let’s face it, this isn’t going to cannibalize any other product sales)
…(echo Mark) of designers executing on a marketing-driven idea
…to connect with a younger audience
…or perhaps worse, an older audience trying desperately to be younger

Either way, absolutely right, this does prompt a vote, and to take a cue from Dutch Uncle, I propose:
A) monstrosity
B) atrocity
C) monstratrocity (yes, like the above apparel concepts, a horrendous bastardization of two things, simply because we can)

My vote goes to J Press on this one for at least having some possible functionality. It looks essentially like an ugly cardigan to me.

The Brooks Brothers thing seems pointless. I imagine there are people out there who enjoy layering a hoodie with a sport coat or at least people who find it a useful pairing in chilly weather but from what I can tell in this interpretation, there isn’t even the benefit of the warmth of layers. It’ll give the appearance of a hood and the ends of sweatshirt sleeves for… fashion? I suppose that’s perfect if you want to dress like a hobo but it’s too warm to actually wear both a sports jacket and a hoodie.

The bird/tree design, more than anything else here, illustrates how misguided these once-great companies are becoming. Especially Brooks Brothers.

Apparently Brooks had a meeting where it was discussed how much linen a gentleman should show under his jacket cuffs when wearing a hoodie. And then they debated whether to put a ticket pocket on their new tweed jogger pants.

The BB jacket looks like a wall decal. Otherwise, it’s not my style, but I’d be pretty much okay with it.

I’m a grad student at an Ivy League school; you guys would be appalled to see what people wear here. There are many hoodie/Brooks Brothers sport coat pairings by social science methodologists. Frankly, I’d take a hoodie/Brooks Brothers sport coat pairing over most other things going on in the fashion world today–at least the sport coat is classy.

What’s the deal with this Vente-privee.com Brooks Brothers stuff anyway? They’ve got some “too good to be true” discounts on normal Brooks Brothers wear most of the time. Are these things just from far-back seasons, or what?